


Same Meaning, Different Words

by TerrificMango



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: AU, Doctor Yuuri, Fluff, M/M, Russian, VictUuri, aromantic yurio, but in a different language, dorks learn each other's languages, dunno when that'll come in but it's definitely there, haha i don't know what the title actually means i just came up with something, i am spelling victor with a c and you can fight me, i'm probably forgetting some things but anyway, it's like sprinkled throughout i guess, learning languages~, light seasoning of angst, non skating AU, oh yuuri is becoming a doctor did I mention that, so the other person doesn't get it, that thing where people call each other petnames
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 15:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9332375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerrificMango/pseuds/TerrificMango
Summary: Yuuri Katsuki is trying to learn Russian. Victor Nikiforov is trying to learn Japanese. They meet on a website for people looking for penpals to talk to in their target languages.In the inbox sat a single (1) message from another user- a penpal request, he guessed. Quickly, he looked at the message’s username, and he realized with a start that it was written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Did that mean they were a native speaker like Mila? he wondered. Slowly, he sounded out the name.“Victor...Nikiforov…”A language learning au~





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi so, I wrote this mostly all in one go with minimal editing and yeah it is actually Shit, enjoy these dorks anyway

“And that concludes today’s class. Be sure to read the next section out of the textbook, and the paper is due next week…” the professor said, and all the students around Yuuri started to pack up in a flurry of papers and books. Yuuri quickly piled all his stuff into his bag and got up. He had somewhere to be. 

He was one of the first out of the class, and as he stepped outside the cold wind slapped him in the face. He started to walk quickly, pulling his hood over his face. The overcast sky seemed to loom over the campus. 

Yuuri rushed back to his dorm room on the other side of the school, grateful that this was his last class of the day and he didn't have to spend any more time outside. In truth, he was looking forward to a warm, peaceful night in the comfort of his room- maybe spending a little time reviewing his Russian...

He opened the door and Phichit crashed into him, yelling.

“Ack!” Yuuri fell backward onto the floor, hard, at the collision. He looked up at Phichit in distress. “Phichit?! What's going on?!”

“Huh?” Phichit looked down in confusion before breaking into his characteristically sunny smile, extending out his hand and helping him up. “Oh, Yuuri! I was just really excited, I have something to show you!”

“What is it?” Yuuri asked warily, still dusting himself off. He loved Phichit, but when he got this excited the results could sometimes be...out of hand. Destructive. Illegal. And Yuuri usually got dragged into it all.

He shivered. Jail was so cold.

“Come and see!” Phichit said, breaking Yuuri out of his dark memories as he dragged him by the arm into their dorm room. He pushed a protesting Yuuri into the chair in front of the desk where Phichit’s laptop sat, and he flipped it open. On the screen was displayed a mostly ordinary looking website. Yuuri stared at it. 

“Um, Phichit, what's all this…?” he asked awkwardly.

Phichit gave him a pouty look, as if he should already be understanding, but then quickly struck a dramatic pose. “Okay, you know how you've been doing all that stuff with Russian lately? And then you said that thing about how you wanted to practice talking to somebody else but there wasn't anybody else around?”

Yuuri’s eyes widened. “Phichit, did you find somebody?” he said eagerly- Phichit’s excitement was infectious. At the same time though, part of him felt slightly embarrassed, since he knew his interest in Russian was such a new, sudden thing.

“Almost!” Phichit leaned across the desk to tap at the laptop. “I asked around on Instagram and this person I follow recommended it- it's a site where people can find other people to talk to in their target language.”

Yuuri glanced up at the url, which was labeled languagepenpals.com, and started to feel himself getting more and more hyped. This honestly looked really promising!

Phichit kept talking excitedly, explaining the site. “You just make your account, you know saying what language you'd like to chat in, your native language, stuff like that. I actually already made an account for you, Yuuri!” Phichit said, winking.

That instantly broke Yuuri out of his reverie. He choked and sat up. “You what?!” He turned frantically to the laptop, waving around at the screen uncertainly. What had Phichit put?! “Um-”

“Relax, I just filled in the bare minimum stuff, like I speak Japanese and English, I'm looking to talk in Russian, and all that. You can fill in the rest later.” Phichit scratched the back of his head. “I was hoping that maybe somebody would respond before you got back and then I could surprise you even more, but that didn't work out…”

Yuuri, who had finally pulled up the account page Phichit had made (he'd set his username as “Yuuri :D”, he noticed), let out a sigh of relief and slumped back. He shook his head quickly, before turning to look up at Phichit.

“Um, thanks though, Phichit,” Yuuri said gratefully, feeling a smile start to spread across his face. He knew he could count on his best bud for everything. “This is really great!”

“Oh, no problem!” Phichit said brightly. He turned and started walking over to the kitchen they shared. “What should we eat for dinner, by the way?”

Yuuri mumbled out some response as his attention quickly drifted away from Phichit, as he was focused on the laptop. 

Phichit had been true to his word, and had only filled out his profile with information about his languages and no personal details. Feeling awkward, he put in a one sentence bio just to make sure he didn’t look like a bot or something (he might do more later, but for now he supposed that would be enough). Next to his profile was a button labeled ‘Find Language Matches’ that he clicked on curiously. The page loaded for a second, then a bunch of other people’s profiles came up on the screen. Yuuri started skim through them quickly; the system seemed to sort through the profiles to make sure they at least had one fluent language in common to communicate in.  
He saw people who were native English speakers who were learning Russian, or Russian speakers who were learning English, and all other combinations. He sat back in Phichit’s chair. He supposed he’d prefer to find a native speaker for Russian. Slowly, his thoughts started to wander to the reason he’d gotten so interested in Russian in the first place.  
He noticed there weren’t any people who spoke Japanese though, at least on the first page.

The semester before, there’d been a foreign exchange student from Russia who was staying at their college for a semester, Mila Babicheva, who had happened to be put in Yuuri’s English class. Even though Mila wasn’t around for a long time, they ended up talking a bit during class. Mila’s English was heavily accented but pretty good, and she was constantly telling Yuuri about her girlfriend, Sara.

“I met her in Spain while on vacation,” Mila said cheerfully, showing Yuuri a picture. “Sometimes I like to call her ‘ангел’. It means ‘angel’, but she hasn’t quite figured that out yet,” she said when she saw Yuuri’s look of confusion.

Mila eventually ended up teaching him a bit of basic Russian, enough for him to hold a very limited conversation, before the semester ended and she abruptly went back to Russia. Somehow, though, during that short time, Yuuri had picked up such an interest in Russian that he decided to try and keep learning it.

Russian was a really fascinating language to Yuuri- it was so different from both Japanese and English, and his enthusiasm only became more as he started to grow better at the language. But without someone like Mila around, like he’d had for the first couple months, he didn’t have anybody he could ask about Russian or practice talking with.

So he was grateful that Phichit had managed to find this for him on such short notice. He honestly felt that Phichit was a little confused at his sudden preoccupation with learning Russian, but Phichit was always willing to help out his friends, and Yuuri was no exception. Once you spend a week in jail with a friend for illegal possession of an endangered species, you just know there's nothing you wouldn't do for each other. 

Which led Yuuri to the current situation. As he slowly read through all the different profiles just on the first page, it suddenly struck him that he was going to actually have to message one of these people. And ask to become penpals (or whatever the term was when it was over Skype and not with letters). Truth be told, he had already been a bit nervous at the prospect of talking with a stranger (and in Russian, no less!), but the idea of being the one to initiate contact made his nervousness triple. Nope, nope, nope.

(Not helping matters was the fact that he’d noticed that none of the profiles on the first page seemed to speak Japanese; he’d been hoping that maybe he could find a Russian speaker who spoke Japanese so he could learn it from his native language, unlike with Mila. It was a small thing, but his mind was latching onto anything negative at this point).  
Fortunately, Phichit interrupted Yuuri at that moment before he could get any more panicked, asking again if he had any idea about what they could have for dinner. Yuuri didn’t, and they ended up eating chicken nuggets. 

 

After dinner, Phichit and Yuuri both went to their separate parts of the room to have some time to themselves. Yuuri mostly just browsed around online, while from the look of Phichit he was probably going through his Instagram. 

After a couple hours, Phichit started to yawn and told eventually told Yuuri he was going to sleep, and turned off the room light without waiting for an answer. Yuuri wasn't really tired, though, and it took a little while longer of him doing more things on his laptop until finally he started to get sleepy as well. 

I'll check over that language penpal thing again and then go to bed, Yuuri thought with a yawn. He clicked onto the page, absently going to look at the inbox.

He sat straight up, and his heart felt like it had stopped.

In the inbox sat a single (1) message from another user- a penpal request, he guessed. Quickly, he looked at the message’s username, and he realized with a start that it was written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Did that mean they were a native speaker like Mila? he wondered. Slowly, he sounded out the name.

“Victor...Nikiforov…”

**Author's Note:**

> Phichit: “let's have dinner”  
> Yuuri: “good idea”  
> Yuuri: “what should we eat”  
> Phichit: “chicken nuggets”  
> Yuuri: *single tear* “genius”
> 
>  
> 
> ANYWAY, this is my first real fic in a while! In this au, none of the characters skate, and Yuuri and Victor both have their own reasons for learning Russian and Japanese before they meet each other. Right now Yuuri and Phichit are still in college in Detroit (I don't know anything about college though so you can take everything I write with a grain of salt). 
> 
> "why couldn't Yuuri have just skyped with Mila" shhh it's for the plot
> 
> I'll try to maintain a steady update schedule, but I'm historically a really slow writer (even when I'm cowriting with someone) so just like...prepare for the worst I guess ^^; Ideally I might update around twice a week, but we'll just see what happens ^^;;;
> 
> okay bye!


End file.
